The Empress of France Menu

As the “world’s greatest travel company,” Canadian Pacific had steamships and airplanes as well as trains and it happily cross-advertised between these modes. This menu from the steamship Empress of France features the Chesley Bonestell illustration of the Canadian on the front cover, with a description of the train on the back.



Aside from being in French rather than English, menus aboard steamships appear different from those aboard trains. Food is included in the price of travel, so passengers don’t have to choose between a la carte and table d’ôte–they get all they want. Entrées include fillet of haddock, pork tenderloin, and prime rib.


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The Empress of France Menu — 1 Comment

  1. They still managed to work in a filet of tongue though. Someone at the top of the dining department really liked tongue. I was 12 years old in 1957, old enough to remember if we all couldn’t wait for a cold tongue sandwich. We didn’t want tongue or sweetbreads, or any of that other weird stuff. We wanted burgers, hot dogs, and fries. All of these were impossible to get on any CP train or ship up until at least 1965 from what I’ve seen of the menus posted here. I’ll bet there was some form of tongue served in the very last dining car the CPR ran. Yuck!

    Jim

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